Just last week, the Oscar-winning filmmaker returned to the red carpet for the first time since becoming a father to premiere his latest directorial effort, the dark period comedy Suburbicon—starring Damon and Julianne Moore—at the Venice Film Festival. And on Saturday, a high-spirited Clooney gamely caught Executive West Coast Editor Krista Smith up on his life with wife Amal and their newborn twins, Alex and Ella, just hours before premiering the film in North America.

“I’ve never been a big sleeper, but now [Amal and I are] doing it in shifts,” Clooney said. “I feel really guilty because my wife has to get up literally every two hours.”

Even though Ella and Alex are the first children for Clooney, 56, the actor said he very much knew what he was in for with fatherhood: “All of my friends . . . all of their kids have gone away to college, so it’s not like . . . everybody says, ‘You don’t know.’ But I knew what it was going to be. I will say it is a lot of responsibility, and they are really fun kids.’”

Showing Smith a photo of the babies on his cell phone, Clooney pointed to Ella—“all eyes,” according to her father—and said, “that’s the girl.” Then, pointing to Alex—who is on the larger side—Clooney added, “and that’s the big thug.”

Video: George Clooney Only Makes Films He Wants To See

Though Clooney said that he felt ready for fatherhood, there is another rumored role which the actor has no interest in taking: that of a politician, even though his name has been floated as a hypothetical candidate especially since Donald Trump, a former reality-TV star, was elected president.

“I would hope we would look around and find people that are much more qualified,” Clooney said. “We have someone in the office right now who is not qualified to do much, certainly not be the leader of the free world. But that shouldn’t mean, ‘Oh, [Clooney] can do it, so he should do it.’”

“Steve Bannon . . . here’s my favorite. This guy: here’s a schmuck who literally tried everything he could to sell scripts in Hollywood. He wrote—you guys have to go online and read this script,” Clooney said, referring The Thing I Am,Bannon’s infamous rap musical screenplay. The production is meant to be an update of Coriolanus. “It’s like a rap Shakespearean thing about the L.A. riots. It’s the worst script you’ve ever read. But he was trying to get it made in Hollywood. And had he, he would still be in Hollywood making movies and kissing my ass to make one of his films. That’s who he is.”

But in spite of the current political chaos, Clooney remains an optimist. “Particularly with our country, we work things out. Winston Churchill’s statement on America was, ‘You can always count on America to do the right thing after they’ve exhausted every other possibility.’ And I feel like that’s us a lot.”

Suburbicon is based in part on a 1957 incident that occurred in Levittown, Pennsylvania, when an African-American family moved into a suburban development only to be met by violence from its white residents. The film premiered at Venice after the Charlottesville riot—a violent real-life incident that eerily mirrored the racial division and rage shown in Clooney’s movie.

Clooney is sorry, in a way, that its release timing may affect the way the film is viewed, “because the discussion for us was about immigration. It was about Mexicans. It was about Muslims. It was about making anyone feel like they are other. Having grown up in Kentucky in the 60s and 70s, I felt like I could tell this story about white people feeling like they were losing their place in society and blaming minorities. I had an understanding of that. I was disappointed that, once again, race becomes really relevant . . . not for the film, but for the country and for us as a society.”

The actor also touched on a few more subjects during his lengthy conversation with Smith, which will be posted on VanityFair.com later this weekend. Among the highlights:

On the $700 million sale of his tequila company Casamigos: “That was a wild few months and day. I remember sitting with Amal after it happened and she said, ‘What does this do?’ I said, ‘Well, it means we don’t have to do fund-raisers anymore. We don’t have to kiss the ass of people we don’t want to kiss the ass of anymore. We can fund things we want, and that is nice.’”

On his early career as a struggling 80s TV star: “I was doing a series called The Facts of Life. I played George, a construction worker, and I had the perfect combination of no talent and overconfidence, which really gelled.”

On aging: “I do have [hair], but it’s white and my eyebrows are changing shape.”

On some of his worst career choices: “I did Batman & Robin. I hope it is in [television] rotation, because there is just nothing like seeing myself in rubber, nipples and all. Luckily, with Out of Sight and Three Kings, I was able to establish working in film before I had left the comfort of television.”

On watching old reruns of E.R.: “Every once in awhile, Amal—because she didn’t really watch television during that period of time—will see it on TV, usually in Europe. And she’ll see it and it just makes us both laugh, because I’ve aged a lot in [the years since]. Yeah, she got me 10 years after that guy, thank god.”

On his worst fashion offense: “I actually knocked my front tooth out when I was in high school. I am a victim of fashion, really. I was walking in those big heeled shoes, those big clog kind of shoes, and giant bell-bottoms. And I had my hands kind of cranked in the [pockets]. I was walking with my dad outside, and I started to fall, and I couldn’t get my hands out of my pockets. And I hit the sidewalk with my nose and my teeth. Fashion kills, man.”